"The Magic Cauldron" was okay but HTN only made me mad. That was not who I was, that's not who I am. It could be a portrayal of ESR more than anyone else - then it would be okay - but that wasn't how it was launched.
Why, yes. I tried asking the Linux kernel for support, and it didn't respond at all! At least MS gave me the pleasure of lying to me and letting me be ignored by real live idiots...;)
Heh. For the $100 an hour Microsoft charges, I'd hook you up to `cat/vmlinuz >/dev/audio` any day of the week.
You've just got to know how to talk to it right.:)
I think Disney et al would also win out with shorter copyright terms. Think of all the remakes they could do!
For "us" (media consumers and free software geeks), 0 year copyright would probably be the best (not to mention "fairest", but "cash rules everything around me" seems more relevant to businesses than "fair", these days), but the media companies would probably reap the most benefits with say, five years of copyright.
I can get more out of my TV decoder box by changing the way it works, so that it decodes everything whether I pay it to or not. Is this even morally wrong?
I don't think it is.
Still, there's a difference.
The TV-company is selling you the channels as a service, and by cracking your TV-decoder you're taking that service without paying.
ATI is selling you the 9700 with extra memory. By doing the "improve the card"-thingie yourself you're doing the service to yourself. No "taking" involved.
Just when you think they couldn't get any smaller than those annoying crumbs in the bottom of the bag. Why doesn't anyone make large chips? That would be easier to grab and eat.
Citizens in capitalist nations are the wealthiest in the world. Isn't that crazy?
Not really, seeing as other countries have a) often been dictatorships, under regimes as oppressive as the corporate rule of contemporary USA but even less lucrative/economically stable, and/or b) under heavy sanction from the outside world.
Just because capitalism does well in some cases doesn't mean that we should forget to try to improve the system even more. We shouldn't forget about workers rights and civil rights.
Capitalism is basically feudalism slightly improved. Instead of buying knights and soldiers to keep your workers in line, you just buy the workers outright. Skipping the middleman and having (slightly) less bloodshed. There can be, there must be something better than that.
Take away copyrights, patents, property, etc. from these brutal business machines, and it becomes much more difficult for corporations to make a profit.
No. Only (and not even necessarily for them) for the corporations actually having that as their business model. Other business opportunities would arise - copyshops, derivative works, consulting, actually improving the status quo (standing on the shoulders of giants) rather than reinventing the reinvention of the wheel.
Or are you saying that your precious market economy couldn't handle freedom from patents/copyright? I thought the whole point of it was its resilience, flexibility and prosperity.
I do hate corporations that are heartless and oppressive. I'm not inherently opposed to a market economy in and of itself - (even though I do hope and think that it will eventually be replaced by a voluntary cooperative economy) - it could very well work fine with worker managed, democratic worker cooperatives.
People in America, Western Europe, Japan, etc. are generally much richer and have more opportunities than countries with different economic models.
Due to many different reasons, most related to humanity's wartorn history. Of course a nation that plundered another is going to be richer, especially if the other is still torn by internal struggle, racism, sexism, religion and other issues.
What, are Corporations not allowed any rights, because public opinion says they're evil?
Why the fuck should they have rights? They're not human, they have no consciensce. Money flows in their veins instead of blood. Instead of neurons they have CEOs and VCs.
Corporationss aren't human beings.
The 10 000 workers you mention, are. So let them decide the laws and their rights.
IE4 fixed some css bugs, but it was the first one to totally replace the regular explorer as file manager (and adding active desktop and all that junk).
I agree with you, though. Major version should mean rewrite (like perl) or at least API-change. (Not that either of those are necessarily good things.)
I'm sorry, but I simply don't just see the law as right and prohibitions that I should take for granted. I have a mind of my own. If I want a law overturned the easiest way will be to show people how much better the world is without that law, i.e. breaking it.
Especially if the law was passed over my head, against my will and the will of my peers. If the law contradict our ethics and morals. How can we be espected to abide by it?
The geeks created the beauty of the p2p nets, decentralized infrastructures of information and art (and hot grits, but that's beside the point). Was it illegal? Possibly (the law is vague). Was it a Good Thing? Yes. It's beautiful. It's functional. It's practical.
We've seen no decline in production of free software and of free, alternative music, free books and free documentation.
Interesting times and I'm almost holding my breath with anticipation.
I can see why people would target specific OS:es because of various grudges.
GNU/Linux (and the BSDs) however, has a great advantage as in it's free software.
Whenever a new trojan, worm or virus comes out for Win, the security companies can't do anything except "scan for them and remove them", while free software folks can actually fix the security issues in the OS or program itself, often in a manner of days.
Yes, it'll be subject to more and nastier attacks the more popular it gets (because of, among other causes, the issues you list), but we've got a full disclosure policy, remember?
Unlike proprietary software, our stuff gets tighter and tighter for every hole reported. (Hmm, I just thought of a number of tawdry puns to go with that sentence. Don't go there.)
Sure, Microsoft and the others release bugfixes ("security updates") at their whims, when they figure that there's enough of a financial loss in not doing so.
"Any reason why I should be able to use code that your tax dollars paid for?"
That's not the issue here MS (or at least I suspect it's funded by MS) want all governmentally produced code to be BSD-licensed (so they can release non-free versions).
As for your question (even though it's off-topic):
People from different countries should be able to use each others code. That's just basic cooperation, that's just reduction of work duplication, that's just common sense and fair and just.
Venezuelan goverment developing GPLed programs? German goverment developing Kroupware? Spread it around, cooperate. A more human side of humanity.
The GPL 2.0 is what, all of ten years now? Earlier versions (and of the emacs license) even older, maybe roots back to the seventies.
"The major gist of the GPL is that if you want to use this code, you must make your derivives GPL too."
Yes. This is not a problem. It is a benefit.
"The government needs a level of secrecy."
So? The GPL does not prevent you from keeping your modified source code secret as long as you're not distributing binaries, in which case closed source is a lot less secure than GPL anyway...
That isn't what this is about, however.
It's about Microsoft wanting to be able to take governmentally (tax-payer paid) developed code and making proprietary, non-free versions of it. The GPL prevents that.
Non-free software has less "use value". This is an economic fact. (I'm not discussing its "trade value".) Thus, it can be argued that making proprietary (non-free) versions of software is destruction of capital. Not something that should be sponsored by the government, I like to think...
"What I like about the toolbars in Win98/ME is that you can add your own toolbars along all the edges of the screen. Can you do this in WindowMaker, my preferred WM?"
If you also run gnome's panel application, yes. (I prefer to just have one toolbar. I use WindowMaker as well at the moment. The only thing I want to change in it is that I want the icons to be at the same place at the dock. It looks weird that they're at two different places.)
By the way, when last I used windows, it's edge toolbars violated Fitt's Law, have they improved?
(I use "unclutter" to get rid of the mouse cursor if it annoys me.)
You can make your desktop background a web-page (or a move playing, or anything...) in X as well. The "root" window thingie, you know...
The toolbars of win98 that you seem to like are available in Gnome/KDE as well, and many others.
I like that you can choose between sloppy focus and click-to-focus -- when I'm at a computer with click-to-focus, I often try to type in the wrong window because I've moved the cursor to a window and forgot to click.
I'd rather live in a world without Microsoft Office (with all that that entails of.doc-files and other horrors) than a world without Microsoft Windows. The OS is just one piece of the computer experience. Someone running XP at home? That doesn't hurt me, happily using GNU/Linux. Microsoft controlling password servers and document formats? That does hurt me.
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"The Magic Cauldron" was okay but HTN only made me mad. That was not who I was, that's not who I am. It could be a portrayal of ESR more than anyone else - then it would be okay - but that wasn't how it was launched.
There is no psoon.
I just noticed that this story is mentioned within the other. I guess it was a dupe, after all.
This is a different issue. It's not a dupe.
Why use the '-r' when you're only copying files, not directories?
Why cluster them just for seti@home? That's already distributed enough.
Heh. For the $100 an hour Microsoft charges, I'd hook you up to `cat
You've just got to know how to talk to it right.
A company is sometimes better than a unixlike monolithic kernel? Right. I to disagree about that, if the company happens to be Microsoft, anyway.
I think Disney et al would also win out with shorter copyright terms. Think of all the remakes they could do!
For "us" (media consumers and free software geeks), 0 year copyright would probably be the best (not to mention "fairest", but "cash rules everything around me" seems more relevant to businesses than "fair", these days), but the media companies would probably reap the most benefits with say, five years of copyright.
The current situation is just sad for all.
I don't think it is.
Still, there's a difference.
The TV-company is selling you the channels as a service, and by cracking your TV-decoder you're taking that service without paying.
ATI is selling you the 9700 with extra memory. By doing the "improve the card"-thingie yourself you're doing the service to yourself. No "taking" involved.
XFree86 works with the Hurd, so that would be now.
Just when you think they couldn't get any smaller than those annoying crumbs in the bottom of the bag. Why doesn't anyone make large chips? That would be easier to grab and eat.
Not really, seeing as other countries have a) often been dictatorships, under regimes as oppressive as the corporate rule of contemporary USA but even less lucrative/economically stable, and/or b) under heavy sanction from the outside world.
Just because capitalism does well in some cases doesn't mean that we should forget to try to improve the system even more. We shouldn't forget about workers rights and civil rights.
Capitalism is basically feudalism slightly improved. Instead of buying knights and soldiers to keep your workers in line, you just buy the workers outright. Skipping the middleman and having (slightly) less bloodshed. There can be, there must be something better than that.
No. Only (and not even necessarily for them) for the corporations actually having that as their business model. Other business opportunities would arise - copyshops, derivative works, consulting, actually improving the status quo (standing on the shoulders of giants) rather than reinventing the reinvention of the wheel.
Or are you saying that your precious market economy couldn't handle freedom from patents/copyright? I thought the whole point of it was its resilience, flexibility and prosperity.
I do hate corporations that are heartless and oppressive. I'm not inherently opposed to a market economy in and of itself - (even though I do hope and think that it will eventually be replaced by a voluntary cooperative economy) - it could very well work fine with worker managed, democratic worker cooperatives.
Due to many different reasons, most related to humanity's wartorn history. Of course a nation that plundered another is going to be richer, especially if the other is still torn by internal struggle, racism, sexism, religion and other issues.
Why the fuck should they have rights? They're not human, they have no consciensce. Money flows in their veins instead of blood. Instead of neurons they have CEOs and VCs.
Corporationss aren't human beings.
The 10 000 workers you mention, are. So let them decide the laws and their rights.
For once, this actually sounds like it's about commercial vs non-commercial, rather than proprietary vs free/open.
Linux kernel, Debian and so on -- slow moving version numbers.
Red Hat, Nautilus (that was a 1.0 release? Really?) -- commercial interest means inflated version numbers.
IE4 fixed some css bugs, but it was the first one to totally replace the regular explorer as file manager (and adding active desktop and all that junk).
I agree with you, though. Major version should mean rewrite (like perl) or at least API-change. (Not that either of those are necessarily good things.)
"You do NOT have the right to violate copyright"
I'm sorry, but I simply don't just see the law as right and prohibitions that I should take for granted. I have a mind of my own. If I want a law overturned the easiest way will be to show people how much better the world is without that law, i.e. breaking it.
Especially if the law was passed over my head, against my will and the will of my peers. If the law contradict our ethics and morals. How can we be espected to abide by it?
The geeks created the beauty of the p2p nets, decentralized infrastructures of information and art (and hot grits, but that's beside the point). Was it illegal? Possibly (the law is vague). Was it a Good Thing? Yes. It's beautiful. It's functional. It's practical.
We've seen no decline in production of free software and of free, alternative music, free books and free documentation.
Interesting times and I'm almost holding my breath with anticipation.
I can see why people would target specific OS:es because of various grudges.
GNU/Linux (and the BSDs) however, has a great advantage as in it's free software.
Whenever a new trojan, worm or virus comes out for Win, the security companies can't do anything except "scan for them and remove them", while free software folks can actually fix the security issues in the OS or program itself, often in a manner of days.
Yes, it'll be subject to more and nastier attacks the more popular it gets (because of, among other causes, the issues you list), but we've got a full disclosure policy, remember?
Unlike proprietary software, our stuff gets tighter and tighter for every hole reported. (Hmm, I just thought of a number of tawdry puns to go with that sentence. Don't go there.)
Sure, Microsoft and the others release bugfixes ("security updates") at their whims, when they figure that there's enough of a financial loss in not doing so.
"Any reason why I should be able to use code that your tax dollars paid for?"
That's not the issue here MS (or at least I suspect it's funded by MS) want all governmentally produced code to be BSD-licensed (so they can release non-free versions).
As for your question (even though it's off-topic):
People from different countries should be able to use each others code. That's just basic cooperation, that's just reduction of work duplication, that's just common sense and fair and just.
Venezuelan goverment developing GPLed programs? German goverment developing Kroupware? Spread it around, cooperate. A more human side of humanity.
Why build unnecessary walls between people?
"The GPL is new."
The GPL 2.0 is what, all of ten years now? Earlier versions (and of the emacs license) even older, maybe roots back to the seventies.
"The major gist of the GPL is that if you want to use this code, you must make your derivives GPL too."
Yes. This is not a problem. It is a benefit.
"The government needs a level of secrecy."
So? The GPL does not prevent you from keeping your modified source code secret as long as you're not distributing binaries, in which case closed source is a lot less secure than GPL anyway...
That isn't what this is about, however.
It's about Microsoft wanting to be able to take governmentally (tax-payer paid) developed code and making proprietary, non-free versions of it. The GPL prevents that.
Non-free software has less "use value". This is an economic fact. (I'm not discussing its "trade value".) Thus, it can be argued that making proprietary (non-free) versions of software is destruction of capital. Not something that should be sponsored by the government, I like to think...
"What I like about the toolbars in Win98/ME is that you can add your own toolbars along all the edges of the screen. Can you do this in WindowMaker, my preferred WM?"
If you also run gnome's panel application, yes. (I prefer to just have one toolbar. I use WindowMaker as well at the moment. The only thing I want to change in it is that I want the icons to be at the same place at the dock. It looks weird that they're at two different places.)
By the way, when last I used windows, it's edge toolbars violated Fitt's Law, have they improved?
(I use "unclutter" to get rid of the mouse cursor if it annoys me.)
I like that you can choose between sloppy focus and click-to-focus -- when I'm at a computer with click-to-focus, I often try to type in the wrong window because I've moved the cursor to a window and forgot to click.
I'd rather live in a world without Microsoft Office (with all that that entails of .doc-files and other horrors) than a world without Microsoft Windows. The OS is just one piece of the computer experience. Someone running XP at home? That doesn't hurt me, happily using GNU/Linux. Microsoft controlling password servers and document formats? That does hurt me.
"Be grateful that he gave you this software in the first place!"
"Gave"?
He "gave" away this software?
Listen bud, if Ulysses gives me a horse, I'll damm well look it in the mouth.
If you "give" me something don't leave tentacles of ownership and control attached to it.
The free software movement isn't about getting cheap software - it's about software freedom.
I kinda feel sorry for Larry, because he just doesn't get it -- but his "help" is tearing up the community.
"You can't be "pragmatic" and use the best tool for the job if you want to keep your freedom."
You can, but non-free software can't be the best tool for the job.